Aussie Press Does Major Beat-Up on AiG's Super Camp

This article was intended to mock the creationist position and create alarm about teaching creation in Australian schools.

As a long-term staff member and speaker with Answers in Genesis (AiG), I am indebted to Garry Linnell and the Good Weekend
magazine supplement for the five-page colour feature about our recent
Sydney Supercamp/Conference (“God’s Classroom”, Good
Weekend section, Sydney Morning Herald, February 24, 2001).
I realize of course, that the article was intended to mock the creationist
position and create alarm about teaching creation in Australian schools.
Having been there all week, I wonder how the article could have passed
the code of ethics for professional journalists to “report
and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, [and] fairness….”
The parodies and photos also seem to have disregarded the requirement
not to “place unnecessary emphasis on personal
characteristics, including … religious belief….”

Despite its apparent harmful intent, the Sydney Morning
Herald has given us tens of thousands of dollars of free advertising
in one of Australia’s largest weekend newspapers. Not to mention
that it also appeared in Melbourne’s The Age. Being an organization
supported by the sacrificial giving of ordinary people, there is no way,
even in our wildest dreams, we could even consider affording such a spread.
God certainly works in mysterious ways.

We are also indebted to Mr Linnell for pointing out that
those at the (AiG) conference at Merroo in January were from all walks
of life, young and old, including “teachers
and doctors and many other learned people.” This is in contradiction
to the usual humanistic media ooze that creationists are an uneducated
lot, holding to their (as they would say) unscientific ideas, purely because
of lack of knowledge. Linnell even admits (shock horror!) that there were
Doctors (i.e. of science) there! In fact, there were about a dozen scientists
giving lectures, and many more in the audience.

Warwick Armstrong making a point in his talk

Mr Linnell also comments that “even
their children were quiet and studious.” For this I personally
apologize, tongue firmly planted in cheek. Maybe for the next major conference
(January 2004—book now) we should import children more in line with
the often rude, noisy and inattentive rabble which teachers face on a
daily basis, in the State humanism/evolutionism-soaked “education”
system. This ill behaviour stems from the humanistic “I have my rights—you
can’t tell me what to do—if it feels good do it” mentality
which has derailed our young, turning many of them into antagonistic,
undisciplined social misfits who sadly have a youth suicide rate which
is the second highest in the world!

I also thank Mr Linnell for pointing out that there were
850 people there for the week, 650 of whom were accommodated for the whole
period. Had there been more beds, then those waiting for a place would
have taken them gladly. We will probably need even more beds for the 2004
conference, especially with the free publicity the Good Weekend
has given us. At the moment there is no comparable centre in Australia
big enough to accommodate those who want to hear this life-changing, faith-building
message. This of course flies in the face of the usual media misinformation,
which implies that those who accept the historical reality of the book
of Genesis, are a small unimportant, uneducated segment of the Christian
pie. Very few Christian conferences in Australia have 650 people living
in for a week.

Archbishop Hollingworth is quoted as saying “Creationists
have a lot of money and they are very smart.” Having worked
full-time for Answers in Genesis for the past ten years, I have
yet to see much of this money. Having come from the business world, I
am aware of the wages and conditions which exist there. Many people in
AiG are working for a third (or less) of what they would receive in secular
jobs. Further, as we travel throughout Australia and the world doing our
talks we are mostly billeted with supporters, gladly accepting whatever
(free) accommodation is available. Conversely, evolutionists seem to have
access to limitless funds, ultimately coerced from taxpayers, to promulgate
their religion.

You may remember Archbishop Hollingworth as the one who wrote the foreword to the anti-Christian book Telling Lies For God, by Australian Humanist of the Year (1995), Ian Plimer, which has been amply discredited on both scientific and ethical grounds. We were later informed that Plimer gloated that Archbishop Hollingworth hadn’t even read the book before writing the foreword!

Dr David Catchpoole facing audience on one part of the geology field trip

As a sometime-photographer, I was tickled to see that
the Good Weekend photography was just as tilted as the story. See
Peter Sparrow on page 18, and Ken Ham
on page 21. Both these gentlemen were photographed from below, for a peculiar
effect. To belittle, photograph from above; to make them larger-than-life
monsters, photograph from below! Also, the shot of Dr
Carl Wieland on page 21 is a curious one, taken from the front with
a strange shadow to his right. Obviously special skill was needed with
the flash to achieve such a distorted shadow? Dr
Tas Walker reports that the photographer was crawling around on the
ground at the geology site, apparently after a further distorted photo.

Why do I say the story is tilted? Just look at the structured sarcasm/ridicule of us poor misdirected souls who would take God at His word, then see the cut to the predictable anti-Biblical “theology expert”. Such “experts” are mostly too blind to see that the humanist journalists are using them in just the same way as Lenin cultivated “useful idiots” in the West, i.e. to undermine their own system!

Then back to the ridicule. Am I offended or discouraged by the ridicule? No, exactly the opposite! I am encouraged by it, immensely. Ridicule of your opponents” argument is the obvious admission that you have nothing of value to say! Look at that which is tendered as scientific evidence by our astute journalist friend:

“…the eye has evolved
independently more than 40 times within the animal kingdom … conservative
computer modelling [has shown] that it will take less than half a million
years for a working eye to develop.”

Science, as scientists tell us, is based upon that which we can observe
and test now. Can we run an experiment to show an actual eye evolving? No,
of course not. The above is speculation, not empirical science. What is
really meant is:

“Different types of animals
have different types of eyes which cannot be explained by a common ancestor.
Of course, a Designer is not science by definition, even if all the
evidence supports it. The only alternative is evolution. Therefore the
eye must have evolved independently many times. The proof is the fact
that there are so many independently evolved eyes!”

The piece about the computer program is tendered as if it has
something to do with actual, real-time evolution, when it is in fact a
program designed with intelligence, into which acceptable results are
predetermined.

One of the “experts” is the above-mentioned humanist
(and mining geologist), Ian Plimer of Telling Lies For God “fame”.
Plimer is quoted as saying “it’s so tragic
that there are scoundrels around seducing people into believing that the
planet is a very simple place. It isn’t. It’s incredibly complicated.”
I have no idea to whom the mercurial Ian refers, as creationists as a
group give glory to God our Creator who has, by His amazing power and
forethought, created a most complex universe. A complexity with which
our feeble minds have yet to seriously grapple. Maybe that was a misquote?

It should not pass without comment that not one of those to whom Mr Linnell turns for support were at the conference. The lack of relevance and accuracy of their comments reflects this fact.

We are further indebted to Mr Linnell for advising his readership that AiG has a Web site which attracts up to 11,000 visitors each day, a Web site that, as he says, has been in the top one percent world-wide.

Dr John Baumgardner’s lecture on catastrophic plate tectonics

My pleasure in reading his article has also been based
on the reality that attack and ridicule have always brought us increased
support, and so much of that new support from the “learned
people” to whom Mr Linnell refers. Plimer’s book stimulated
a measurable jump in support for AiG. Maybe it’s time for a new effort,
Ian (as was promised some time ago)? Much of this new support came from
dedicated Christians who came to know about us via such crude attempts
at ridicule.

Many realize that those the humanists attack with such desperate
tactics must pose the most serious threat to the humanist religion. With
good reason, humanists are worried that we’re “stealing their
flock!”

Conversely, humanists are generally not in the least threatened by churches that compromise the Word of God. Remember the hysterical intolerance displayed by humanists against the rezoning for the proposed AiG Creation Museum in the USA? Some of them said they wouldn’t mind if AiG were building a church, but this museum will teach people that the Bible is actually true and can be trusted!

One Anglican minister told me that Plimer’s book woke
him up to the fact that AiG is an organization which defends the authority
of God’s Word, at a time when many sections of the church are co-habiting
with the anti-God religion of evolutionism. Presumably the Good Weekend
article will do the same for others.

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.